The Cedar Valley region of eastern Iowa is a long way from Boulder, Austin, Miami or other celebrated entrepreneurial ecosystems in the United States. Yet this small region in the heart of the Midwest represents an emerging movement among small and midsize cities for building community around entrepreneurs.
In 2019, Danny Laudick of the nonprofit Red Cedar organization and Andy Stoll of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation began a conversation about telling the story of the Cedar Valley ecosystem. “We did not want an academic case study nor a ‘congratulations, our work here is complete’ report,” Laudick notes. “Instead, we wanted to pause, capture, and reflect upon the community, connections, place and people that make up this ecosystem.” The stars in this story are the entrepreneurs who have created startups and scale-ups in this region and who live and dream this work. They, in tandem with a cast of visionary community leaders from both public and private sectors, have created a special kind of place in the Cedar Valley.
Here the energy is palpable—and for many, it is magic. This project uses a generative lens to discover where the life is in this ecosystem. It strives to be as close to those moments as possible through individual accounts, then connect those stories in a useful way to seed new possibilities in building community and connections. A special thank you to Andy Stoll, senior program officer for entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, for supporting this project and for his guidance in how best to share this story.
To read the full report, click here
